


keep going

by CinderScoria



Series: her name is jade [10]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Gen, MAJOR spoilers through season 3 episode 47, and panic attacks, slight warning for suicide idiation/attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinderScoria/pseuds/CinderScoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peace will come when she completes her last mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep going

Hour three and she disappears.

They’d checked to make sure it was gone for good, and the second she left the hospital she took off. Sam still hasn’t found her. He combs through the entire township, minorly concussed and half-strangled. He needs to find his runner. He needs to make sure she’s okay.

Hour six and it’s after midnight before she shows up on Sam’s doorstep shivering and silent and closed down. They stare at each other for a few seconds and then Sam pulls her into a hug, lets her rest her chin right on his shoulder where her eyes get full view of the bruises on his neck in the shape of a handprint. They don’t move for the rest of the night.

Hour twelve and she’s fine, she’s good, she’s just gotten back from talking to Simon and Sam doesn’t let her out of his sight the whole day. It’s spent testing and giving sitreps and pretending the tension isn’t thick and palpable. She shows up at Jody’s hospital room–Runner Four has finally woken up and the bruises stand stark out against her freckles. Her being there is an apology and it’s brief but sincere, but Jody will attest later that there was pure terror in those Asian eyes.

Hour twenty-four and Runner Five still hasn’t slept.

Hour twenty-six sees her arguing with Janine about being put on active duty, because even though she’s been cleared it’s obvious the trust is destroyed. She storms out in frustration and Sam takes her place, voice hoarse still but ever as insistent. She needs to do something, she needs to prove that she can, can’t Janine see that? And the woman’s voice is firm and tart but her words are gentle: “She’s not ready. None of us are.”

The next four hours are full of her beating the shit out of the punching bags, and running the perimeter of the base. She ignores the looks and the whispers of people who used to adore her, love her even, and that made her feel so _good,_ so _wanted._ And she’d hurt these people. She’d hurt these people. Five trips and stumbles and gets back up, blinking the black dots from her vision. _If you don’t sleep, you eat,_ \- she chants in her head, a long time mantra that’s kept her going for eighteen years. _If you don’t eat, you sleep._

She does neither.

Hour thirty and nobody finds her tucked between those cabinets of that part of the hospital that burned down her first week at Abel. People don’t come in here, and she’s claustrophobic as all hell so she figures if she panics and breaks down she’ll have a damn good reason to. Later people notice the bruises and lacerations, but nobody asks.

Hour thirty-one and she finally, _finally_ disassociates.

Sam tries to drag her to get something to eat. She doesn’t. Sam pleads, argues, threatens her and she ignores him, can’t even look at him. Her handprint is still there. She can still feel her fingers crushing his neck, pushing him into the wall, ax held in her left hand, ready to chop his goddamn head off. Her Sam, the one who stuck by her through everything, even this. She’d almost killed him. She thought she had.

Hour thirty-six and she’s losing time. It doesn’t bother her like it should, but one minute she’s training and the next she’s on the roof of the barracks, staring down at the township and knowing the fall wouldn’t kill her. Nobody sees her up there. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing.

Five doesn’t even know what happened between the fortieth hour and the forty-eighth. But she hasn’t slept and she hasn’t eaten in two days, and she realizes with some relief that she’s dying.

Sam finally corners her on the roof with a muffin and a blanket. He looks determined for someone barely taller than her and with fading handprints on his neck. “Eat,” he orders, but she doesn’t want to. Her stomach roils just looking at the tiny thing in his hand.

But Sam is looking at her with the same eyes he gives Janine when he wants something really bad, and she makes the mistake of meeting them. He holds her gaze and suddenly the muffin is in her hand and on its way up to her mouth.

It tastes like sawdust, and she can’t even swallow the tiny bite. She chokes on it, forces it down, and wants to burst into tears, right then and there. She gets up way too fast, trying to force her way past him, and she passes out a little. She wakes seconds later furious and violent, and the swings send Sam skittering back to the edge of the roof. Five lunges for him, grabs him, and he _screams,_  the same terrified scream he’d made when she’d advanced on him the first time.

Five pulls him back from the edge. They’re both trembling and when Sam finally raises his gaze to hers she sees the same distrust she sees in everyone else.

She takes off. She goes to her cabinet and dry heaves but there’s nothing to bring up, nothing but terror and shame and hatred ripping her already destroyed voice to fucking shreds. The disassociation ends. She’s back to the hurricane of noise and violence and she spends the next four hours trapped in her own personal hell.

And then, Moonchild’s voice. _You know it’s him._

_No no no no no._

But it triggers something she’s tried to bury: serenity. Moonchild purred. She cajoled. When she gave her an order it was like she was asking, like she was guiding, like Five could always say no. And Five never did. Of course not. She’s Moonchild’s favorite. She could do no wrong in her eyes. “I can make you happy,” she’d said, tears brimming in her eyes, and she did. God, she did, she made Five so happy and Five hasn’t been happy, truly happy, since she was eight years old. Before the depression. Before the borderline. Before suicide felt like the only sure way to keep the world from the monster that is her mental illness. Before her divorced parents kickstarted a lifetime of abandonment and self esteem issues. She’d been so peaceful. So calm.

 _Not real,_ she tells herself, but she doesn’t believe it. Moonchild is right. It’s Sam keeping her here. It’s Sam she can’t let go. If she wants true peace she needs to get rid of him, and if she can’t--no!

Another episode is spent scrabbling and screaming as much as her nonexistent voice can allow and begging for this to end. Moonchild leaves, and Five wants her back, and that’s when she knows something’s gotta give.

Hour fifty-three and she heads straight for the gates. It’s almost noon but the day is dreary and wet and the rain feels so good on her skin she wants to sink to the ground and pass out until this whole mess is over. But it won’t be, she reminds herself, not until she’s gone. So she goes to the guard who’d helped her out before, the day after she came back, and he knows exactly what she wants but word has gotten back to him. She’s unstable. She hasn’t slept and she hasn’t eaten. He needs to detain her until Maxine and Paula can take a look.

Five pulls a gun on him. “Open the gates,” she says, like she’s forgotten that she’s mute. Only air comes out, but the order is short and to the point, and the guard freezes.

She doesn’t like guns much. They’re loud and final. She isn’t sure why she brought it. She has nothing else on her–no backpack or bandana or glow in the dark Power Rangers watch. Her entire body trembles around a rock steady hand, aiming the gun right at the man’s head. And she could do it, she muses absentmindedly. Pull the trigger and it’d be over and done with. Mullins turned her from a teenager to a soldier. Moonchild turned her from a soldier to a killer. What was another person to the stacks of lives she’d taken away?

“Five!”

And Five positively _moans,_  with barely any sound, and she doesn’t move because if she does she will bury this bullet right between Sam Yao’s eyes and she knows she won’t be able to stop herself.

Sam comes up behind her slowly, moving around to her side. “Five,” he says, and his voice matches the confusion and horror in his face. “What are you doing?”

 _It’s him,_  says Moonchild. Five screws her eyes shut.

“You know Greg,” Sam whispers. Five growls, opening her eyes, and there’s the name to the face she’d so conveniently forgotten, there’s the fear in his eyes like he’s facing a curled up rattler and he knows there’s no way to get out of its path.

 _You can do it, Five,_  says Moonchild. _It’ll all be over, I promise._

Sam comes into her line of vision, and she switches targets. He stops. But he’s not scared, he’s sad. He’s very sad.

“She’s still in your head, isn’t she?” he murmurs.

_This is your mission, Five. Your last mission and you will know peace. You will be happy._

_I am not happy,_  Five tells her. _I have never been happy. I will never be happy._

But she can’t put the gun down. Her eyes are locked on Sam, and his are locked on the gun. The cold metal presses into her temple. She could do this. She could save him. She’d know peace. But she’s stuck. Sam’s gaze has locked her in place. She can’t move.

Sam gnaws on his lip. “Is that why you haven’t been sleeping?” he prods, nudging forward ever so slightly. “Because you think you’ll wake up back under her control?”

She exhales and if she’d had her voice back it probably would’ve come out as a whimper.

Then Sam cracks a smile. He actually smiles. “You aren’t, Five. You weren’t completely under her control.”

“I killed people,” she mouths, because she can’t sign, and she doesn’t think she’d be able to if she tried.

“You didn’t kill Jody. You didn’t kill me.”

_Kill Sam Yao. Kill him. Kill him._

_Shut up!_ she screams at her.

Sam is still talking. “You’re my friend, Runner Five. You can’t kill me. You won’t. You know how I know?”

Five states at him, and Sam takes another step closer. “Back in the shack? Your ax was in your left hand. You’re right handed, Five. You’d already set yourself up to fail and you don’t even realize it, do you?”

That means nothing. But it means everything. _Kill him,_ Moonchild pleads. _Then we can be together. Forever._

Five drops the gun. The safety’s still on. Then she’s dropping too, and Sam’s suddenly there, and he’s pressing her into his shoulder and he’s crying and she’s crying and clutching him as if she’s never going to hold him ever again. The world is going dark, very dark, but Sam’s voice drowns out Moonchild’s.

“You’re okay. You’re okay. I forgive you. I forgive you.”

Then she finally sleeps.


End file.
